SCOTUS slaps down women's health concern

I’ll try to figure out what the Supreme Court said Monday in that much-anticipated Hobby Lobby health care case.

The court ruled 5-4 that family owned businesses, such as Hobby Lobby, can exempt contraception coverage for women who work for the company under the Affordable Care Act.

So, let’s see if I have this right: If a female employee of Hobby Lobby wants to prevent a pregnancy through contraception, she is unable to apply for insurance under the Affordable Care Act because, again as I understand it, her employer disagrees with the policy on religious grounds.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/supreme-court-hobby-lobby-decision-obamacare-108435.html?hp=f2

The employee, therefore, is denied coverage because of her employer’s devotion to his or her faith.

I have to agree with critics of the ruling. Women, they say, have seen their health care put in jeopardy because of a narrow court ruling that applies only to contraception.

Let the firestorm rage all over again.

Hobby Lobby is a fine company. My wife and I shop there on occasion for picture frames and Christmas decorations. It’s also owned by a devote Christian family. I honor their faith as well.

What is troubling is the denial of contraceptives under the ACA and why it’s such a bogeyman in the eyes of Hobby Lobby.

Here’s how Politico reported it: “The contraception coverage mandate isn’t central to the law, the way the individual mandate is. By letting some closely held employers — like family-owned businesses — opt out of the coverage if they have religious objections, the justices haven’t blown a hole in the law that unravels its ability to cover millions of Americans. They didn’t even overturn the contraception coverage rule itself. They just carved out an exemption for some employers from one benefit, one that wasn’t even spelled out when the law was passed.”

The ruling along those true-blue political lines: the five conservative justices outvoting the four liberal ones. Well, that’s the way it goes. I accept the ruling as legit, as opposed to some on the right who two years ago raised holy hell when the court voted, also 5-4, to uphold the ACA.

I accept the ruling. I surely don’t agree with it. I believe a privately held company owner has been given license to stand in the way of a woman’s health care needs on grounds that have little to do with, oh, health care.